“I can’t believe you did that,” said Joan. “You closed the door right in those FBI men’s faces!”
She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, where she’d been listening.
“That’s right,” said Des.
“You’re defending a criminal and you don’t even know him!”
“He belted an officer and went AWOL, that’s all.”
“The government is after him!”
“Government—I never seen those two before in my life.”
“You’ve never seen Nikos at all!”
“Yeah, but Nikos is family.”
—The Dead File, by Kevin O’Morrison

One of my earliest memories was being
in my grandmother Blanche and great aunt Dori’s home, watching my
mother’s cousin Kevin O’Morrison on television, acting in a
commercial for Reynold’s Wrap. Kevin was smiling, clean-shaven,
wearing a work shirt and a big white butcher’s apron. You could see
that he was enjoying himself. Given the ways residuals work, I think
Kevin dined out on that commercial for many years thereafter. For a
while, and to quite a few people, he was the “Reynold’s Wrap Man.”
A super hero of mundane proportions, wrapping meat at the speed of
hands.

You may not have seen him in that role, especially if you are under 50, but you might have seen him as the
drunken doctor in the mini-series
Lonesome
Dove, or as Meg Ryan’s father in
Sleepless
in Seattle. He also played a sheriff in Chevy Chase’s zany
comedy Funny
Farm. Older readers may recall Kevin in roles such as a prizefighters in the classic film
noir boxing drama The
Set-Up (1949) and in
The
Golden Gloves Story (1950).

The Hollywood Reporternotes
“He made his movie debut in
Dear
Ruth (1947), starring Joan
Caulfield and William Holden.” Fans of JD Salinger may notice the
names of those two stars, Holden and Caulfield, with some delight.
He played in Peter Yates’
The
Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) opposite Robert Mitchum. The Reporter continues,
“On television, O’Morrison played the title character on
the 1950-51 series Charlie Wild, Private Detective and was
on The United States Steel Hour, Philco Playhouse,
Lonesome Dove and Law & Order. A native of St.
Louis, O’Morrison in 1938 had a walk-on in Orson Welles’ innovative
play Caesar, produced for Broadway by the director’s Mercury
Theater company. He also appeared on the stage in Winged Victory
and The Rose Tattoo.”

Readers may not readily notice that Kevin’s career on stage began in 1938,
his film career in 1949, his television career in 1950, but then
there was a hiatus, a period when he wasn’t getting acting roles,
until about 1973 for film, a little earlier as I recall for the
Reynold’s Wrap commercials. Kevin explains some aspects of how that
situation felt in his excellent novel, The Dead File.
Yes, he was one of the many actors and playwrights who found their
careers suddenly on hold as a result of the disgusting behaviours of
McCarthy, Nixon, and the “House Unamerican Affairs Committee.”
Woodrow Wilson’s march toward fascism was alive and well in the
1950s.

Born in 1916My great aunt Dori Adams never married. However, she did give birth
to Kevin in May 1916. The picture at right shows her holding her son
in 1917.

During one of my visits to Kevin and his wife Linda O’Morrison’s
apartment in New York City in the 1980s, while I was a student just a
subway ride away at Columbia, Kevin talked briefly about identifying
the man “Morrison” as the most likely candidate for his father,
and adopting the Irish construction O’ to indicate that he was the
son of Morrison. Naturally, since “Morris-son” means son of
Morris, and O’ means son of, the construction was entirely unique.
In the huge New York City white pages that came with the telephone in
my dorm room, there was only ever one entry for O’Morrison.

A few years before Kevin was conceived, Woodrow Wilson signed the
Federal Reserve Act into law. About the same time, 1913, the income
tax amendment to the constitution was supposedly ratified by the
requisite 36 states. (I should note here that many people felt that
tariffs were bad for the poor and affected prices in ways favouring
industrialists. Much of the support for an income tax in the 1909 to
1913 period reflected a desire to replace tariffs, which, of
course, never happened. Instead, Americans began to suffer from both
tariffs and income taxes.)

Then, in 1914, Europe went to war. It is an interesting aspect of Woodrow
Wilson’s 1916 re-election campaign that much emphasis was given to
“he kept us out of war” even as events like the Zimmermann
telegramme and the sinking of the Lusitania
were being configured to bring the USA into that very same war. I
mention these aspects of history prior to Kevin’s birth to give you
some of the flavour and context of the era in which he was born.
Wilson would go on to segregate the civil service, bringing Jim Crow
to Washington, DC; start the FBI; form the Black Chamber to monitor
every phone call and every telegramme from Americans to other
countries, a predecessor of the National Security Agency which today
monitors every form of communication by Americans, and probably by
everyone on Earth; establish American brown shirt brigades to
terrorise minorities and promote patriotism; bring the USA into World
War One to support the major banking cartels; turn away Ho Chi Minh
at the Versailles peace conference in 1918 and thus start the Vietnam
War; and promote the ideology that resulted in the Justice
Department’s “Palmer Raids” against anarchists, resulting in the
imprisonment and deportation of American citizens for expressing
political thoughts.

It was, as they say, a turbulent period. There were race riots.
Treaties against trafficking in narcotics in the 1920s began what we
now suffer under as “the war on drugs.” Narcisistic psychopaths
like William Randolph Hearst clamoured for war. Jacob Schiff, having
arranged a $100 million loan to Japan in order to bring about war in
1905 between Japan and Russia wrote a rather famous cheque to finance
the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. The Tsar was deposed and he and
his family executed. Bolshevism, fascism, and other ideologies
became prominent in America.

The Morgan YardKevin was a really great playwright. It is not just me saying so, either.
Wikipedia
contains the following passage, “He began writing plays in the
1960s, most of which have been performed Off-Broadway and in theatres
throughout the US; two of which have been performed in Europe. He is
a Creative Art Public Service (CAPS) Playwriting Fellow, a National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Playwriting Fellow, Winner of the
National Repertory Theatre’s First Prize for Playwriting (for his
play "A Party For Lovers), and was awarded The Pinter Review
Gold Medal for Drama (for his play The Nightgatherers).
Two of his plays were chosen to be staged at the O’Neill.” So, he
was much honoured as a playwright.

My favourite play of his reflected on a place in the Missouri Ozark
Mountains near St. James that my family visited on a great many
occasions. My grandmother and my great aunt Dori are buried in the
family cemetery that Kevin discusses in his play
“The
Morgan Yard”. Some of my most cherished memories involved
family gatherings to visit, tend the gravestones, leave flowers, and
remember our ancestors.

A summary of the play appears on this site.
“To Carrie Morgan, the Morgan Yard is a burying ground where all
Morgans have rested since 1789. To the Defense Department, it is land
owned by them since the little known Redefinition of Public Lands was
enacted in 1934. When the department tries to incorporate the yard
into its Indian Landing Depot, the town, the Army and Carrie find
themselves on a collision course and the yard becomes a place of
mortal struggle.”

As you can see, I come by my anti-government views both genetically
as well as through my education, upbringing, and experiences. The
government has never been on the side of ordinary people, it has
always been a tyranny for the benefit of the few who control power.

My cousin Kevin helped me see things not as they seem, but as they
really are. As an actor, as an author, as a playwright, Kevin did
amazing things to bring enlightenment to the world. I miss him.

PassingIn late November, I felt a strong urge to visit the Seattle area.
One of my goals was to visit with my cousin Kevin and his wife Linda,
two of my very favourite people in the world. I phoned the number
I’ve always had, but the subscriber line was disconnected. I later
learned that Cox Communications refused to provide any forwarding
information, presumably because they are as evil as their reputation
suggests.

The state government of Oregon seems to hate eastern Oregon, truck
drivers, and motorists with a passion. Unlike nearly every other
state in the country, Oregon refuses to put any natural minerals, or
beet juice, or anything on their Interstate highways in the winter,
wanting to promote as much danger, as many accidents, and as much
death as possible. Oregon should have all its federal highway funds
cut off, permanently. Then again, all states should, and the federal
govt should cease to exist. Anyway, the trip to Seattle took me
three days. It is Oregon’s fault.

On Monday 12 December 2016, I visited the O’Morrison family home in
Ardenwood. I remember a conversation with my cousin in 2006 when he
mentioned that he liked the name of the subdivision, as it reminded
him of Buck Rogers and Dale Arden from serial films in the 1930s.
Kevin and Linda’s neighbours helped me find them at the Fairwinds
Brighton Court assisted living facility, where they had been since
October 2016.

Very sad to say, my cousin passed away on Sunday 11 December. The
news was shared to me by telephone at the front desk of the Brighton
Court facility by Linda’s nephew Eric, which was, to me, a rather
difficult and unhappy way of learning this news. Somewhat to my
surprise, I learned that I have three cousins who are Linda’s two
nieces and nephew, who have never been introduced to me, and whose
last names I still do not know. (I did give their first names to the
reporter from the Hollywood Reporter, but he neglected to include
them in his listing of survivors, sad to say.)

Further ReflectionsYou never met my cousin, in all likelihood, if you’re reading this
obituary. Nowadays he has begun that “long sleep” quite near
Seattle, so it is possible you never will. You can visit
his personal web
site however long it remains up, and see there his
personal motto, “Ubi libertas, ibi patria,” or “Where freedom
dwells, there is my country.”

You would very likely enjoy any of his many performances on the silver
screen, and if “Charlie Wild, Private Detective” ever makes it to
Amazon video or NetFlix, you might see some of his television
performances. He wrote many excellent plays, and each of them is
worth reading, staging, and viewing. His novel The Dead File
is an excellent read. He also completed a script for “The Mutilators,”
which I don’t think was ever published, but survives in the collected
papers of my mother and in a few other places.

Here is a brief excerpt:
Androcles: “Law, Mennipus, is nothing more than custom, canonised.”
Menippus: “Then let me tell you, Androcles, it’s become our
custom for private citizens to make their own law.”

Cousin Kevin was a brave, charming, easy-going, tough, and hard
working loader, freighter, bell-boy, usher, vaudeville comedian,
stage actor, film actor, television actor, playwright, author, and a
fun man to know. I think everyone in my family remembers hearing a
story of a sailing adventure and a very large whale that rolled over
nearby and stared at Kevin through one eye, before moving along. If
that whale seemed to grow with every telling of the story, it never
did swamp the ship. Wherever Kevin is, now, I expect he’ll be
sharing that story along with many others.

Jim Davidson is an author, entrepreneur, space enthusiast, extropian,
raconteur, and bon vivant. He took to heart Heinlein’s admonition to
be capable of many things a long time ago, and can kill a beast,
prepare a carcass for cooking, tan the hide, use the small bones for
sewing, gather herbs, make fine sauces, clean a house, programme a
computer, build a database, populate a spreadsheet, engage in
forensic accounting, and read at blinding speed. He currently is a
principal at EldarCapital.com and is planning two conferences in
2017. You can read his essays on Being
Sovereign in his book by
that name from Amazon.com, where it was briefly among the million
best sellers. You can read his essays on Being
Libertarian
from Lulu.com. And if you are very nice to him, he might make
available copies of his book The Atlantis Papers
“for a fee, Ugati.”

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